Reviews for Presidential Libraries And Collections

The average rating for Presidential Libraries And Collections based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-23 00:00:00 Andrew Crystal The Battle for America, 2008 promised to be a insider's dish of scoops and memo dumps from the extraordinary 2008 election. While there was some of this -- for example, Johnson and Balz publish the email the McCain campaign sent out authorizing the Ayers attacks on Obama, proving it wasn't the result of a "rogue" Palin -- the vast majority of the book is a narrative account of the primaries and general election that will be familiar to anyone like me who was engrossed in the politics of 2008. Make no mistake, this is still a excellent, tremendously readable tome for those who feel themselves unfamiliar with all the developments of the election. For political junkies, it's a fun page-turning walk down memory lane, but it offers little that is genuinely fresh, sacrificing curiosity and detail to its narrative arc. Johnson and Balz have few memorable scoops of their own; instead, they rely heavily on revelations that have been public already for some time, such as Josh Green's Atlantic piece on Hillary's internal emails. They also fail to use their obvious access to render a more three-dimensional environment around each turning point in the campaigns. I was left wondering what internal discussions Hillary Clinton's campaign had about Jeremiah Wright when the story first broke, or what each presidential campaign thought of the other's convention. I also disagree with some of their recollections. While Balz and Johnson are fair observers of Obama, McCain, Clinton, and Palin, they dismiss Joe Biden as a non-entity and only mention off-handedly that he was always the front-runner in Obama's VP search. My impression was that the truth was more interesting: that Obama preferred Tim Kaine or Kathleen Sebelius early on, but that his inability to pull far ahead of McCain forced his consideration of more experienced picks. At least, that was the common wisdom at the time. Whether it was true or not, the author's don't say. Also, I don't recall Palin's Charlie Gibson interview being quite as non-disastrous as the authors do. There are convincing polling analyses out there that pinpoint the start date of Obama's final rise above McCain as coinciding with the Gibson interview, rather than the financial crisis. Rather than offer their perspectives, the authors simply treat the Gibson interview as part of Palin's "rise," contradicting the very conservative pundits they quote later. My favorite parts of the book by far were the sections covering 2007 in both parties. On the Democratic side, we learn that early on Obama was in many ways a lousy candidate: surly, evasive, wooden, prone to exhaustion, and often aloof to the constituencies he was trying to woo. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, was arguably on top of her game. It provides a key insight into Obama: his winning quality wasn't his energy or his charisma, but his ability to be self-critical and adapt. Of course, there was a fair bit of luck involved too, which the book makes clear. All in all, it's an enjoyable read that you'll finish in less than a week. Though overbilled as a inside scoop, it will definitely get you up to speed on the narrative developments you may have missed over the last two years. You also come away from the book with a greater understanding of, and respect for, Obama, McCain, Clinton, and Palin.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-26 00:00:00 Gary Demasi I could read books upon books about the 2008 US Presidential Election. Two boundary breaking candidacies for the United States, wanting to succeed an incredibly unpopular President burdened with two wars and a recession. Having read Game Change by Heilemann and Halperins I was looking for a book that could rival theirs and this met the match. A journalists book rather than a historian so it is a detailed account instead of an analysis but there isn't anything wrong with that. As someone who was too young to appreciate how uplifting the Obama campaign was, especially in the time of Trump, reading this was almost some form of political escapism.